Recumbent Bike Workout for Beginners

Over the past years, recumbent bikes have rapidly grown in popularity thanks to their versatility and efficiency. Extremely adapted to beginners, recumbent bikes will encourage users to adopt an ergonomic position and prevent fitness-related injuries by delivering a gentle albeit just as efficient workout. In fact, with a recumbent bike, it is possible to lose between 300 and 500 calories in just one hour. Because these machines tend to stay close to the ground, they also tend to be far more stable than upright bikes.

If you’ve never used a recumbent bike before, it is advisable to start with an entry-level model such as the Exerpeutic 1000 or the Progear 190, and also to adopt a gentle workout in the beginning and gradually build up your strength as your body acclimatizes itself to the motions. Here are some workouts for beginners to get you started:

Don’t neglect warming up and cooling down: The best way to ease your muscles into the motion is to warm up your body before you climb on the recumbent bike. This will make it far easier for you to engage in longer workouts. Similarly, allow your muscles to recover by doing some cooling-down afterwards.

Interval training: If you’re a beginner, you might want to indulge in some interval training first. This means occasionally switching between the different levels of intensities, hence alternating between higher and lower levels of resistance. Some bikes actually have built-in programs to render interval training even easier.

Start off slowly: While it is natural to be over-enthusiastic and train for longer hours at first, this can actually be detrimental to your training session since you will overwork your muscles and tire yourself out more easily. Therefore, it is advisable to start off slowly and gradually build up your stamina to efficiently prepare your body for longer training sessions.

Take it one week at a time: Draft up a week-by-week plan that you can follow to enhance your stamina. The first week, for example, you can indulge in thirty-minute sessions, four times a week. On the second week mark, you can take it up by going for forty-five minutes training sessions over the span of five to six days. If you feel up to it, you can go for hour-long training sessions on the third week. By the fourth week, you should be able to comfortably train for one hour, five times a week. If you want to burn more calories, you can of course go for longer workouts but only aim to break the hour-mark after having trained for four weeks in a row.